Can I Remove a Judgment Myself?

So, one of your creditors had been threatening a judgment against you. Unfortunately, he tired of threatening the action and actually carried through with it. Now, he has been granted a court-ordered judgment against you.

The judgment has caused your credit score to free-fall. In point of fact, a judgment can stay on your credit report for 10-12 years. At the end of this period, if the judgment remains unpaid, it can often be renewed. Your credit history can even report a paid judgment for seven years!

Now, you would like to remove the judgment from your credit report. You need to be aware that it is illegal for credit reporting agencies to remove accurate entries. There are only two ways an entry can be legally removed from a credit report. The first way is to prove that an item is inaccurate. The second way is to dispute the item and, if the creditor cannot verify the item within a legally specified time frame, the credit reporting agency is legally required to remove the item. Items which consumers believe are false can be disputed pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Included in the FCRA, are judgment and public record items.

You will need to draft and submit a dispute letter to the appropriate credit reporting bureaus if you decide you would like to dispute a judgment which appears on your credit report. There are three major credit reporting bureaus. These three bureaus are TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. To whom the credit reporting bureau will forward the dispute will depend upon what kind of debt is involved. For instance, a dispute for a car loan judgment could be forwarded to a loan company, bank, car dealership, etc.

However, with a judgment or public record, the credit reporting agency will forward the dispute to the governmental agency which maintains the record, normally located in the county courthouse of your resident county. Recording and verifying judgments is performed by county employees, not high-tech automated software programs. As it takes longer for a human to search legal records and verify a judgment or public record than clicking a computer key a few times, it is often the case that a judgment or public record request for verification is unable to be completed within the 30-day time limit. If this is the case, the credit reporting agency is legally required to remove the judgment entry from your credit history.

It is possible for you to move forward with credit repair on your own. However, if you do not have the time or if you just don’t enjoy wrangling with credit reporting agencies, you might consider speaking to a consumer rights attorney. The typical consumer rights attorney has tackled hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of similar cases.

Learn how to Remove a judgement. Discover the only legal way to remove any questionable credit report judgement at www.creditreportjudgement.com.